Hard News: Behind the Paywall
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I like that (a) ad-supported content as an alternative to a paywall is being undone by, for example, Readability and Instapaper (which I use to read PA, but not PAS because then it defaults back to PA),
I'll have to ask the lads about that. Safari 5's Reader, which does essentially the same thing as Readability, doesn't work on PAS either. I think those things aren't as much of a threat to business as ad-blockers, because you've seen the page, and you simply choose to bring up the text in a friendlier format.
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those columns which are of the 'meandering and wittering' ilk
says "paid per word" to me
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There is another major problem with the Times' paywall - it doesn't work. It is set up for UK credit cards, which have a 'passphrase' attached as additional online security. My bank said there are no plans to attach passphrases to NZ cards. So NZ and presumably at least some other countries' credit cards don't work, thus removing large numbers of international readers from the list of those willing to pay. The payment screen just hangs, then freezes, then times (ha) out.
I admit to finding this out the hard way - by trying to subscribe to the one pound for the first month offer. I won't go on about the Times' 'digital help' except to say that after several fruitless email exchanges they sent me an auto mailer offering the same deal I had originally tried and failed to purchase.
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The boom in New Zealand newspaper opinion columns -- and particularly celebrity opinion columns -- is a function of the ludicrous rates paid for freelance journalism, and the general tightening of editorial budgets.
Freelancers physically can't do good, deep feature stories for the word rates being paid -- and they're not commissioned from them anyway -- but they might be able to knock out a few words of opinion, alongside the light-feature gigs for lifestyle mags 'n' stuff.
The celebrity part really took off with the launch of the Herald on Sunday, which was stuffed full of the things on launch. And most of them were screamingly awful.
Which is to be expected. Even someone like Paul Casserly -- a really brilliant writer for TV -- delivered a reliably leaden column for Metro every month until he stopped.
I do like the new Metro, but there are too many columns in that, and a few which similarly lack purpose. I liked all the Public Address contributions though :-)
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I admit to finding this out the hard way
Be consoled then Joe, that your pain has added to the knowledge of your fellow readers.
Seems like a shocking screw-up, that.
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@jo
Not all UK cards have the passphrase (eg my personal one does, but the company one doesn't). It's visa or whoever your provider is who is doing the asking - times (and anyone else overhere) just gets a reply back saying "all good, but you need to redirect them here first".
Also, it's visa and mastercard only. Amex dont do it (and hence yo dont get the screen at all). And I think, over here, it's mostly debit cards.
Normally, there is a section on it saying "if you dont have a passphrase, click here", and it just ignores it. It is possible that the times have screwed up tho, and ticked "UK only cards" on their application form....
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I don't think there'll ever be a shortage of actual, factual information.
No there won't, but that's not what people like Philip Kitchin do. It's information + context + the "who, what, where, when, why and how" that makes it meaningful.
I do like the new Metro, but there are too many columns in that, and a few which similarly lack purpose. I liked all the Public Address contributions though :-)
Also rather sad that the book and film reviews still get less space than the (admittedly excellent and useful) restaurant notes. I'm not dissing the capsule review (they're much harder to do well than you might think) and I get that Metro's never has been, and never will be, the kind of organ than runs discursive review-essays like the London Review of Books or TLS. But surely there's a happy medium?
Seems like a shocking screw-up, that.
Gold star for understatement, there. Not quite seeing the viable business model that includes telling potential customers to fuck off.
Just FMI, hasn't the Wall Street Journal been running a successful glitch-free paywall for years? You'd think the new proprietor would have taken a rather close look at how they made it work, but I may be making an unfair assumption that there's a certain level of rational thought in play here.
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I guess I'm a sad Herald letters writing kind of guy- but not sad enough to join their online community. Not really on topic here- but I thought I'd post it anyway.
Anyway had to laugh at the edit I got on this letter. Only the first and third sentences made it in.
Dear Sir,
A champion team is a settled team built on trust, like Spain at the World Cup. Or the All Blacks with players like McCaw, Carter, Mealamu, Muliaina, Thorn and coach Graeme Henry.If New Zealand's business people think that being able to fire their employees at will is aspirational, we are in a lot of trouble. This is no step change.
The government, like their case for mining and the economic benefits of private prisons, is using bogus or dodgy information. The economic benefits of this move are highly questionable.
HoS columnist Matt McCarten said that around 400,000 people change jobs every year. Will they and their families make decisions such as buying houses or appliances under a 3 month trial? First abolish the customer, as Bob Ellis said.
We are not part of a team then. The scenes at the National Party conference remind me of a moment from the late Mereta Mita's Patu: A crowd of people are protesting. Muldoon and his cabinet stroll up. One of them laughs and gives the fingers to the protestors. They didn't give a damn about them.
This is what the National government is doing with this policy.
Yours Sincerely,
Martin BatesAhhh well....
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Hullo there Marin -- always nice to see fresh meat... I mean faces. Think you were aiming for the thread next door, but please stay long enough to get the hang of it.
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Well the Times' digital help person said their payment screen needed a passphrase, but it sure didn't offer the opportunity to either enter one or by-pass it. As soon as I hit 'submit' it all went bad. My bank was sufficiently interested to check with their security people see if the Times had tried to charge my Visa, but they hadn't lodged anything against it. However, the Times did retain my card number, which hasn't impressed my one little bit.
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@Martin
Oh dear. So they (as in Garth George) turned a reasonable argued piece into one of the typically incomprehensible non-sequiturs that their letters page specialises in.
(I tend to characterise letters writers into "bigoted", "bigoted & ignorant", "illiterate", "bigoted, ignorant and illiterate" etc. But maybe it's just the editing.
(Which is one reason I reckon the end of print journalism in NZ would be no great loss).
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I still rather like the feel of a magazine or newspaper in my hands, as such I do not consider an app of the same to be a substitute good.
That being said though, as a recent owner of smartphone (HTC Desire) I suspect that some of my media consumption habits may change.
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I don't think his Garthness is still the gatekeeper in chief, having shuffled off down the line into semi-retirement and all.
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So does anyone know the best way to measure online traffic?
Let's face it, it's very important to have that information if you are a marketer, its basically critical and online needs to start presenting clean and readable data so it's easy to sell to ad buyers.
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. . . ludicrous rates paid for freelance journalism . . . Freelancers physically can't do good, deep feature stories for the word rates being paid . . . The celebrity part really took off with the launch of the Herald on Sunday
I may be missing something here Russell, but are you saying that freelancers can't deliver substance on the per-word rate, but that celebs such as La Coddington will deliver for that same rate?
Maybe Frank Richards had the right idea. Contracted for-so-much-money-per-line, he delivered one word per line.
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So does anyone know the best way to measure online traffic?
Let's face it, it's very important to have that information if you are a marketer, its basically critical and online needs to start presenting clean and readable data so it's easy to sell to ad buyers.
Marketing & publishing have different needs - marketers want to know how traffic arrived at the site, what happens on the site, and how often (and why) the users return. Publishers (and advertisers) need to know the demographics of the visitor base, and the number of unique eyeballs for ads (which is not to say that demographics isn't of interest to marketers, but it's not as vital as it is with advertisers).
On the publisher side, Nielson and Comscore are the big players, with support from Quantcast, Compete, and Google's Ad Planner. They get their data from a mix of (hopefully anonymised) ISP data, toolbars & panel members, and some of the service supplements this with on-page tracking codes. These services all measure in different ways and have subtly different ideas as what constitutes a unique user, and hence give different traffic figures (it's connected with extrapolating up from a small panel to the whole (usually US) web population, and also attempting to discount traffic by people accessing a site through multiple computers/browsers/deleting cookies/etc.
There was a storm in a blogcup a few months ago when comScore was charging multiple thousands to install & verify their on-page tracking code (which they used to triangulate with their audience panel data) - a lot of people thought it sounded like protection money, but from experience I know how hard it is to accurately instrument a site of even moderate complexity.
For those who aren't wanting to spend 10K per year, Quantcast has a similar service for free (but doesn't have the same weight with ad agencies), and Google's Ad Planner pulls in data from Google Analytics to supplement their other data sources if it's available.
None of the tools compares exactly with each other, and they tend to look very different to the figures from something like Google Analytics - oddly enough this topic turned up on Reddit in the last week (where there was a lot of noise about how the services are all rubbish, and one interesting comment from an actual ad buyer about what they look at when they use these tools: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/cq1lf/why_do_experts_misunderestimate_the_size_of_reddit/c0udcli ).
These work best in the US, where the majority of the panel data comes from, but Nielson and (I think) Hitwise both have NZ-specific data available, but be prepared to put your hands in your pockets.
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Anyway had to laugh at the edit I got on this letter. Only the first and third sentences made it in.
I absolutely DETEST the letters editors who do that to me. After it happens enough I give up on a publication for a few years - if someone is going to twist my words so savagely, why bother?
I don't think his Garthness is still the gatekeeper in chief, having shuffled off down the line into semi-retirement and all.
Doesn't Armstrong have a hand in it?
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and I thought it is a more authoratative protest to write a letter in than to comment on a blog site- as publications such as the Herald, and at times the Listener are broad spectrum. They're important to people across all kinds of view points and so have that audience.
To try and keep it on topic.
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These work best in the US, where the majority of the panel data comes from, but Nielson and (I think) Hitwise both have NZ-specific data available, but be prepared to put your hands in your pockets.
Nielsen has a reasonable panel in NZ now, but any demographic information I've seen has been pretty basic. It does tell me that Public Address readers tend to be high-earning, highly-educated people in Auckland and Wellington who use the internet a lot.
Probably the most interesting thing about Public Address to come out of the Nielsen panel is the fact that readers here are more likely to contribute to blog discussions and online forums than those of any other site Nielsen tracks in NZ. I like that.
We've also at various times topped the table for "time spent on page".
It's expensive to be there, though, and I find the Nielsen site incredibly difficult to use. It's easier to get basically the same numbers (although Nielsen's definition of unique user is notably more stingy) from Google Analytics. Basically, you have to be on Nielsen to sell agency ads.
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To try and keep it on topic.
Perhaps best not to be laying down the law when you've only just arrived, Martin.
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Doesn't Armstrong have a hand in it?
I'd be very surprised if he does.
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I'd be very surprised if he does.
Me too. He's in Wellington, for one thing.
Coincidentally, Denis Welch had some commentary on the handling of letters yesterday, and said that The Press does a much better job than anyone else, and actually makes a virtue of its letters page.
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Meanwhile, The Guardian has had a closer look at the numbers -- and declared that 90% of The Times' online audience has gone.
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I thought it is a more authoratative protest to write a letter
Ooooo that's so sweet.
I can see it all now, as a Disney Epic.
"Hold the press's" an' everything.....
And no, I'm not being scarky. I had a flash of a different time.
Long gone now.... -
3410,
I had a flash of a different time.
Long gone now....Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling (Peter Cook): ... It was shortly after World War Two. Do you remember that? Absolutely ghastly business — I was against the whole thing.
Interviewer (Dudley Moore): I think we all were.
Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling: Yes, well, I wrote a letter!
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PS. Also not being snarky. If I was, I'd also be targetting my own endless bitter rants.
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